Cacti tool is an open source web based network monitoring and system monitoring graphing solution for IT business. Cacti enables a user to poll services at regular intervals to create graphs on resulting data using RRDtool. Generally, it is used to graph time-series data of metrics such as network bandwidth utilization, CPU load, running processes, disk space etc.

Install Cacti in RHEL / CentOS / Fedora

In this how-to we are going to show you how to install and setup complete network monitoring application called Cacti using Net-SNMP tool on RHEL 7.x/6.x/5.x, CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x and Fedora 24-12 systems using YUM and DNF (Fedora 23 onwards) package manager tool.

Cacti Required Packages

The Cacti required following packages to be installed on your Linux operating systems like RHEL / CentOS / Fedora.

Apache : A Web server to display network graphs created by PHP and RRDTool.

MySQL : A Database server to store cacti information.

PHP : A script module to create graphs using RRDTool.

PHP-SNMP : A PHP extension for SNMP to access data.

NET-SNMP : A SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used to manage network.

RRDTool : A database tool to manage and retrieve time series data like CPU load, Network Bandwidth etc.

Configuring MySQL Server for Cacti Installation

We need to configure MySQL for Cacti, to do this we need to set password for our newly installed MySQL server and then we will create Cacti database with user Cacti. If you’re MySQL is already password protected, then don’t need to set it again.

Set MySQL Password

To set new password for MySQL server, use the following command. (Note : This is for new MySQL installation only).

I am Ravi Saive, creator of TecMint. A Computer Geek and Linux Guru who loves to share tricks and tips on Internet. Most Of My Servers runs on Open Source Platform called Linux. Follow Me: Twitter, Facebook and Google+

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